Saunas have been around for a long time, and for a good reason. There are a lot of benefits to bathing your body in steam. From stress relief to medical benefits, saunas can work wonders for your body. Today, we’re going to take a look at 10 benefits that you can reap by visiting a sauna every now and then. By the end of this article, you’re going to want to start visiting saunas as regularly as possible. But before we dive into the benefits, let’s take a brief look at the history of sauna and the importance of sauna rocks.
What Are Saunas?
Saunas (or sweat lodges) have been around for a long time. Filling up a room with hot steam and lounging around in it has been a part of various cultures for over a thousand years. Modern saunas take inspiration from Finnish, Turkish, and Russian sweat lodges.
A sauna is simply a small room with a hot and humid interior. Saunas generally have a wooden interior and are heated using sauna rocks. Sauna rocks play a significant role in determining the overall performance of a sauna. These rocks are heated up and placed in a central part of a sauna, and water is poured over them to create steam. This is how saunas have been powered since ancient times.
You can find different kinds of saunas throughout the world. However, despite the many variations in temperature, humidity, and functionality, all saunas have a number of great benefits. So, without further ado, let’s take a look at the health benefits of saunas.
10 Proven Health Benefits Of Saunas
Basking in a sauna once or twice a week can really help soothe your body and your mind. Let’s see how saunas can help you improve your health.
1. Anxiety And Stress Relief
One of the most common reasons for going to a sauna is stress relief. The warm, humid, and quiet interior of a sauna can help you relax and unwind after a long day. Regular visits to a sauna can provide you with a quiet place where you can relax your mind and soothe your body.
Saunas help with stress relief by increasing the production of endorphins in your body. Also, by heating up your body, saunas dilate your blood vessels. This improves blood flow and loosens your muscles. All of this helps melt away stress and relax your mind and body.
2. Improves Heart Health
The stress-relieving ability of saunas has always been linked with improved heart health. Saunas help decrease stress and reduce the risk of fatal heart diseases by as much as 50%. Saunas improve heart health by de-stressing you mentally and physically.
They also promote the production of various ?feel good? chemicals inside your body. Bathing in saunas is also known to dilate your arteries and veins. This improves blood flow and also decreases the amount of pressure on your heart.
3. Improves Your Body’s Ability To Heal
Like we mentioned above, saunas do a number of things that de-stress your body and improve blood flow. Better blood flow is known for enhancing your body’s ability to heal itself. Therefore, people with injuries or people who work out often find visiting saunas to be quite helpful. Regular sauna bathing can help your body heal faster.
One study has shown that a single visit to a sauna increases your body’s production of growth hormones by 200-300%. This shows that saunas can significantly speed up your body’s healing abilities.
4. Gets Rid Of Toxins
Our body has a number of ways of expelling toxins, and one of these ways is deep sweating. Working up a proper sweat is something that not a lot of us do nowadays. Regular visits to the sauna help you sweat, and this is a superb way to detoxify your body.
Deep sweating helps get rid of harmful toxins that can have a negative impact on your body. This can benefit your health in a number of ways, such as decreasing the chances of developing a mental disorder.
5. Better Sleep
Saunas are known for improving the quality of your sleep. When you go to a sauna, your body unwinds, and you release a lot of endorphins. As a result, it helps you calm down mentally and physically on top of enhancing the quality of your sleep.
Another way sauna bathing helps improve your sleep is by regulating your body temperature. After you bathe in a sauna, your body temperature becomes cooler in the evening. Lower body temperatures are known for improving the overall quality of your sleep.
6. Boosts Your Immunity
Exposing your body to heat and humidity on a regular basis is known to increase your production of white blood cells. Therefore, regular visits to a sauna can help boost your immune system. Exposure to steam is also great for your sinuses, meaning that it helps your body fight the flu and sinus-related diseases as well.
7. Great For Your Skin
Warmth and humidity are always great for your skin. Your skin has fewer chances of drying up if you take sauna baths regularly. Also, when you sweat, your skin gets cleaned. Deep sweating helps remove gunk and dead skin from your pores.
It also helps flush out bacteria from your skin. You should keep in mind that too much sweating can be a bad thing as well. So, it’s important to regularly clean your skin after deep sweating in order to avoid skin problems.
8. Helps Burn Fat
A sauna won’t help you reach your weight goals, but it will help you burn a few calories. When your body heats up, and you start sweating, you use energy. Studies have shown that a person can decrease their weight by 500g after a single sauna session. However, this doesn’t mean that you should expect to lose 500g after every session in a sauna. Regular sauna bathing will help you keep your metabolism active and make your weight loss more efficient.
9. Improves Red Blood Cell Count
Regular sauna bathing can increase your body’s red blood cell production. This makes your body’s oxygen delivery more efficient, improving your stamina, strength, and your overall energy levels.
10. Reduces Inflammation
Regular visits to a sauna can help you manage inflammation in your body. This is great for people with chronic pains and problems that cause inflammation in their bodies. Saunas help with inflammation by improving blood flow, promoting your body’s healing, and relaxing your muscles.
Final Thoughts
Saunas have been in use for thousands of years, and for a good reason. Throughout history, people have visited saunas in order to cleanse their bodies, de-stress, and speed up their healing abilities. We now have scientific evidence that backs up the many health benefits that sauna bathing has to offer. All in all, visiting modern-day infrared saunas and traditional saunas that use sauna rocks is great for your health.
After reading this article, you should now be quite familiar with all the benefits that come with sauna bathing. If you still haven’t visited a sauna, you should take out some time and give it a try. Alternatively, you can buy a home sauna with its accessories to reap all these amazing health benefits without leaving your comfort zone.
I’m a 20-something stay-at-home mother and wife. I have an amazing husband, a beautiful daughter, two loving dogs, and a lazy cat. I wouldn’t change my life for anything! I love to read, listen to music, cook and blog!
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